News, education, female superiority, and just about anything else
He pretty much covers all the bases here, debunking all the arguments we’ve been given. Stop demonizing them, Bush. They are no threat to us.
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Listen to the expert speak.
If you behave as though you are demonically possessed, George, people will think you are. Do you care? And more importantly, are they right?
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The problem with this story is that it reaches a Fox News-worthy conclusion right up front, only hinting at the end that the conclusion may be unjustified.
Having sex at early age has long been linked to a laundry list of health problems from an increased risk of sexual disease to an increased risk of cancer.
But now, Columbia University and New York state researchers say waiting too long to have sex may carry its own risks, according to an ABCnews.com report.
People who lose their virginity between the ages of 21 to 23 are more likely to suffer sexual dysfunction problems later in life, according to a study from Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute’s HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies.
So the obvious conclusion is that beginning to have sex later will result in a man having a greater risk of sexual disfunction. Clear cause and effect, right?
The study, which is will appear in the January 2008 issue of the American Journal of Public Health, found that men who lose their virginity in their 20′s seemed more likely to have problems becoming sexually aroused and reaching orgasm.
But the researchers pointed out that men who started having sex early were also at an increased risk for sexual dysfunction and said further research is needed to determine if a causal interpretation can be made.
If a causal interpretation can be made. It doesn’t sound like the researchers are at all convinced that a late start to sexual activity causes sexual disfunction, which is what was the lead-in, right?
Let’s look at the somewhat less glamourous but probably more likely cause and effect here. For men to wait until their twenties to begin sexual activity is probably a sign of an underlying sexual disfunction.
Well, doh. Of course.
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In what he described as “an emergency mission to help a key ally in the war on terror,” President George W. Bush flew to Islamabad today to give General Pervez Musharraf tips on how to eliminate democracy.
Mr. Bush said he scheduled the trip just hours after General Musharraf declared a state of emergency in Pakistan and suspended elections “because when it comes to eliminating democracy, I thought my friend Pervez could benefit from my experience.”
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Mr. Bush said that while he commended General Musharraf’s impulse to eliminate democratic institutions, he felt that the military strongman was going about it the wrong way: “When you’re getting rid of democracy, the last thing you want to do is tell people you’re doing it.”
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Does the White House even have a clue what their responsibility is to the American Public? Do they even have an inkling that there is an absolute meaning to the word “truth”, and when you don’t tell the truth you are LYING?
I guess not.
White House never investigated Plame leak.
Shortly after the leak was revealed by Novak, Bush said he wanted an investigation to identify the leaker:
A senior official quoted Bush as saying, “I want to get to the bottom of this,” during a daily meeting yesterday morning with a few top aides, including Rove.
Bush: “If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is.”
Ok, so now we know that was a load of crap, too. There was no way he intended for the truth to come out. He knew right from the start who was involved, and he knows it now.
What I want to know is what’s going on in their puny little drug and alcohol wizened brains. Am I the only one who thinks this says something serious about an administration that’s not only a bunch of pathological liars – they lie so much they can’t even keep track of what they told to whom – but they do so in such obvious ways that anybody with half a brain could predict they’d get caught, and they don’t care.
Let’s look at the Gonzales scandal again. We all know that federal attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President. He appoints them to do a job, and he can fire them for no reason at all.
Federal attorneys decide what laws will be enforced and which won’t. They decide what will be investigated and what won’t. So they are very influential.
For instance, in the Libby case it looks like a federal attorney decided not to indict anyone in the administration for releasing Plame’s identity, although it is now publicly known that almost everybody was involved in one way or another.
Apparently they had a quota of Democrats to prosecute, and they were supposed to move on this whether evidence existed or not. The fact that they prosecuted Republicans who clearly broke the law but didn’t prosecute Democrats for whom no such evidence exists was highly offensive to the White House, which does not feel there is a role for truth in public service.
But the problem isn’t that he fired them for no reason. The problem is that they chose to fire the 8 federal attorneys for a really, really bad reason. Somehow Gonzales feels that the fact that he can get away with something makes it the right thing to do.
This is really important. It shows a window into the working of his mind and the minds of other officials in the process of being sucked into the investigation. It shows they have no ethics or morals. All that matters is political expediency.
But how would you expect anything less from the political hacks that Bush filled his patronage offices with? Let’s see, Michael Brown…Scooter Libby…Alberto Gonzales… They have their jobs because of who they know, not what they are capable of doing. With Gonzales in charge, the Justice Department is out to impose their morality on you.
Alberto Gonzales lays awake at night thinking that somewhere, someone is thinking an erotic thought and getting excited. He intends to put a stop to this.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
I was going through my blogs, updating the WordPress, and thinking about how having all these separate blogs didn’t work out, due to the difficulty in putting the info where the readers are. I was also concerned that all these random little articles I’ve been finding may be taking away from the focus of the blog – which should be about deep thought and other such things.
Then lo and behold, I went to Feedburner to retrieve my feed codes and saw they had a new widget. It’s a little flash blog feed player. Cool. I can run all my news articles in there.
I started a new blog just for the news clips. It will feed into the player, which I have put in the sidebar, in case you missed it. You can check them all out regularly, as I will be updating as much as humanly possible, at least when there are interesting stories to pass on. And my main blog will stay full of entries worthy of me putting my picture at the top.
Update to say: News widget? I’ve got widgets all over the place now. I’m the Widget Bitch.
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So John McCain has decided he can’t win without the votes of the ultrafasc-…err…ultraconservative wing of the Republican party (read story below). So he’s decided to come out in favor of overturning Roe v Wade.
I’m missing something here. As far as I can see, the best he could do in this situation is to trade moderate votes for conservative votes, and he’s hoping that the votes he picks up will be greater than the votes he is throwing away.
He’s certainly lost my vote.
Perhaps he’s seeing something else involved. Maybe he’s hoping that the NeoFasci-…err…Religious Right will deliver more money to him, and he can use this to buy back my vote. Sorry, John. I won’t vote for anybody who’s clearly sold his soul. It’s gone way past the integrity stage.
The buzz on the boards is about peripheral issues. They’re arguing about the sanctity of life, about who has the right to decide, about women who should have chosen not to get pregnant, about when a fetus is a “human being”. These are all red herring issues. You can argue until you’re blue in the face, but they have no resolution.
Why?
Let’s look at what it’s not about. It’s not about preventing abortion by preventing unwanted pregnancy. The people who oppose abortion are opposed to all forms of birth control.
It’s not about babies, saving innocent lives, or the so-called “sanctity of life”. None of the anti-abortion forces supports programs to raise the standard of living for children in this country. It’s perfectly OK for these children to die from hunger, homelessness or lack of medical care. The old saying, “Life begins at conception and ends at birth” says it best.
It’s only peripherally about women’s bodies. When a woman says, “I have the right to decide what to do with my body,” these people are incensed, because they know that woman are mentally child-like, irresponsible, and would routinely abort at the 9th month if given the opportunity. That is, after all, what the whole so-called “‘partial birth’ abortion” issue is about.
It’s about controlling women’s lives. It’s about punishing women who have sex. Babies are god’s punishment for women who have sex without being owned by men. Women who avoid pregnancy and childbirth in this way are going against god’s will, just like people who avoid AIDS through the use of condoms. Sex is supposed to have nasty consequences. They’re supposed to suffer, at least for the rest of their lives.
Keep in mind that people who are opposed to abortion are more likely to have them than people who support them, probably because they don’t use birth control. That’s right, the “sanctity of life” is only a consideration when they’re trying to control a woman who is not a member of their family.
Women who leave men who act like assholes are just as guilty to these regressionists. They’re supposed to stay married to a man, whether he beats her or has women on the side. All the programs to support “the family” do it at the expense of families without responsible male parents. It’s taking money from the poorest and giving it to the middle class and upper class.
It’s just about controlling women’s lives.
On the lighter side, a quote from Miss Polly telling her opinion about whether men should be able to decide if women can have abortions.
I think men can have valid opinions on this matter. BUT if they are to get involved in the decision making process first let them have a bowling ball shoved up their arse, have to carry it for nine months then be ripped asunder getting it out, have it permanently attached like a ball and chain to an ankle with a recording on a loop that says “Mummy can I have this, Mummy can I have that?” at top volume for the next 25 years.
Once they have done that I will allow them to give opinions on laws and policy regarding termination of pregnancy . See I am fair really!!
Here’s the newest from Sen. Ted Stevens, the man who described the Internet as a series of tubes: It’s time for the federal government to ban access to Wikipedia, MySpace, and social networking sites from schools and libraries.
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For those of you who are not familiar with the story, where have you been? This is important stuff, and it’s going to be on the test.
Not that I want to burden you with too many details… I certainly don’t. But it’s turned into such a he said/she said/ they said thing, and it’s hard to see where the nexxus of evil resides.
Here‘s a good article about continuing revelations of conspiracy and coverup that go all the way to the top. Looking for more? Stories about Valerie Plame or Scooter Libby will give you lots of background. Put your reading glasses on. You’ll be reading for a while.
In the spring of 2003, the White House was trying to deflect criticism that it had fabricated WMD accusations against Saddam Hussein and Iraq in order to precipitate a war. Former ambassador Joseph Wilson spoke out against this, and in retaliation someone in the White House leaked the fact that his wife was an undercover CIA official to the press, thus compromising her career.
It is illegal to reveal the identity of undercover CIA operatives to the press, yet the White House did it. The only question was, who did it, who knew, and who, if anyone, gave the orders.
The investigation has gone on for years. Accusations have gone as high as Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, but we know for sure they can’t have had any part in this, since they always hold themselves to the highest ethical standards. Ok, I’m done throwing up…
The prosecution has decided to pin the deed on Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s then Chief of Staff and Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs from 2001 to 2005. What they are saying is that he was told this over and over again, and also told how damaging it would be to Wilson and Plame if the information leaked out, and then gee whiz! He went and did it anyway.
The defense is saying that Libby really doesn’t remember lots of stuff that clearly happened and was recorded at the time for our later viewing and listening enjoyment. They seem to be saying that he heard it so often he figured it was common knowledge, and telling it to reporters was no big deal.
Well, not that they looked all that clean before, but there’s an awful lot of people in the White House whose hands are now looking very dirty, like Mary Matalin…
Let’s step back and look at what we’ve got. Look at Libby’s resume. His career since his frat days with dubya has been a series of patronage jobs. He’s a political hack, in an administration that prides itself on handing out patronage jobs to friends who value loyalty above all else. Like a distressingly high number of Bush appointees, he has never held a real, productive job. Like Bush himself, but the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree, now does it?
I’m going to assume that Libby is telling the truth when he says he doesn’t remember many of the details that others agree on. Which would mean he’s got memory loss. He’s in good company, though. Bush himself is a few synapses short of a complete neural circuit. But ulitmately, even if it were to be proven that Libby worked utterly alone to do this, the responsibility still goes all the way to the top, to who hired him.
The President appointed to a high position in national security a person who is
“Scooter”? We had a guy named “Scooter” in charge of some national security function?
That’s just plain wrong.
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Give me a break. Nobody would ever have believed the story. It’s too crazy to be a good joke, and certainly too weird to base a movie on. This story makes the strangest of us look oh so so normal. News story, for those who somehow missed it.
I don’t want to look at the whole thing. We’ll ignore all the bizzarro stuff and cut right to a question I’ve thought about before, a question based on an observation I have made numerous times concerning cases of assault, murder, and the intention thereof.
Police said Nowak told them that she only wanted to scare Shipman into talking to her about her relationship and didn’t want to harm her… An officer reported following Nowak and watching her throw away a bag containing the wig and BB gun. Police also found a steel mallet, a 4-inch folding knife, rubber tubing, $600 and garbage bags inside a bag Nowak was carrying when she was arrested, authorities said.
WTF? How does a supposedly intelligent person convince herself that she was carrying a deadly weapon for purposes other than violence? Is it some defense mechanism in the brain that convinces them that they weren’t actually plotting out a murder, so if the other person does get killed or injured (as anybody else in the world might have predicted might happen), that they are not to blame?
I remember Amy Fisher saying this same thing. She brought the gun to Joey Buttafuoco’s wife’s house to show it to her, so she would know she meant business. Somehow it went off, but she wasn’t to blame…
Even back then it wasn’t the first time I’d heard that same claim. I still don’t understand how a person can so delude him or herself, while anybody in the world would be able to say, “Bad idea, dude.”
A woman fighting another woman for control of a man – whether he wants her or not – or a man fighting to control a woman.
You got me.
Now for a little fun.
Over Her Knee: The Weblog of a naughty adult boy!
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Cleaning out the comment box…(from Craig)
Reading Tamim Ansary’s recent article in Encarta “The Rise of the College Woman” would initially strike fear into the hearts of many a Male Chauvinist…
I read the article earlier, but it doesn’t seem to be available online anymore. I recall at the time that it was rather cursory and missed some important points.
…but you know something? Reading the Holy Bible for many years, I have yet to read anything depicting or predicting the overtaking of Western civilized males, i.e. men becoming the new INFERIOR SEX (or as more politically correct, the SECOND SEX)!
I am missing your point. Are you saying that if something was not predicted by the bible, it will not happen? I am presuming that the bible failed to predict with certainty both your birth and mine.
Why is the phrase “SECOND SEX” a ‘politically correct’ way to describe men in your mind?
It’s really weird to even perceive such a thing in our American culture, given the objective of achieving egalitarianism and not out and out role reversal. I personally believe that, for the moment, men are “letting” women win, or the situation makes it appear to be so.
There’s certainly plenty of that. Men do still have almost all the power, inferior education or not.
Let me argue my point:
a) HELLO —
Now there’s an effective way to start a discussion and let the other party realize you think they’re an idiiot.
THERE IS WAR GOING ON IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN! After “911″, many young men opted to serve their country in the war on terror. The bombings of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon inspired many men (more men than women) to put college on the back burner, seeing they could go back to school funded by taxpayer dollars, after their tour of duty had ended. In World War II, women outnumbered men on campuses all across the country, but that ended when the war ended, as the GI Bill helped many men to enter campuses to better themselves.
This is a trend that has been snowballing since long before the World Trade Center bombing. Young men who chose to join the military are those who were not planning on going to college the first time around anyway. Keep in mind that the “GI Bill” has been gutted, and the only way to get a good education from being in the service is to stay in the service as your career.
b) The pressure put on men to be the primary breadwinners in a family will always cause most men to GET THE JOB FIRST — GET THE EDUCATION LATER!
Ah, you’re stuck in the 40’s. Absolutely nobody gets married right out of high school nowadays. A guy who decides not to attend college and work instead is not doing it because he has a stay-at-home wife and little mouths to feed.
It is, and probably always will be, easier for men to exercise the option of learning a high paying trade outside of college, like plumbing, construction, electrical, interstate tractor-trailer driving, auto mechanics, than it will be for women. Most of the occupations that pay comparable to (or less than comparable to) the above mentioned positions, say, elementary school teaching, nursing, bank customer service, retail business management, child development, etc. will require further formal education in college. See a pattern here?
I absolutely see a pattern here. Men can get still a decent job right out of high school with no experience or skill. Traditional “Women’s” work requires an advanced education for the same pay level – an education that she probably must acquire at her own expense, meaning she starts her working life four years later and with a heavy debt load…
c) I argue that the surplus of women on campus these days are:
1. Married, widowed, or divorced women living in “empty nest” situations. Many of these women grew up believing that they had to give up college in order to marry and raise families. Nothing wrong with this, but you can see the growing number of women in this category flocking back to finish their education nowadays (My sister received her bachelors degree at age 51!) I say good for them! They should!
Most of the older women I know going back to school are there because they are unable to find employment any longer. They have been laid off, while their male co-workers continue to be employed. They look for a change in career that may be less unstable, which often means they are back to school getting a second degree. But regarding your previous comment about men planning on getting their degree later…there are very few men doing this in colleges, compared with the number of women doing so.
2. Part-time enrollees (note the Encarta article)
I really can’t comment on this in the sense that the article is unavailable. But working people must attend school part-time, unless they are so wealthy that they don’t need to work. The reality of student aid is that a self-supporting full-time student is expected to work a full-time job in order to qualify for aid, which means they don’t have the time to take a full course load. Student aid is intended for new high school graduates with parents who contribute to their support.
3. Online enrollees
This section doesn’t say anything about online education. Did you forget your point?
I think that when the going gets rough, the natural fragility of the male ego (trust me, the female ego is not exactly a stone wall either) will be motivation enough to get men going in the direction of further formal classroom education.
Fragility of the ego is not usually a motivating force for enrolling in college or registering for classes. In fact, probably the opposite is true: fear of failure may keep away potential students who worry also about losing money for classes they may not be able to pass.
No way the normal male is going to let women take over, especially when we have the potential to go further, if we want to.
In what way do males have the potential to go further than females? Because they’ve decided in advance not to let females succeed?
It’s clearly a myth that a higher level of education is the only indicator of intelligence.
So who said it was? It’s also clearly a myth that monetary success is the only indicator of intelligence.
You only need a GPA of 2.0 to get anything from an Associates to a Master’s Degree…
Actually, you probably are not going to be able to graduate from any but a community college with a GPA of 2.0. Most colleges will allow such a low grade for elective courses, but you would be on academic probation if you got such a low grade in your major required courses. Advanced degree students with such low grades don’t graduate. They are dropped from the program.
…and who in their right mind is going to show their GPA on a resume’??? Isn’t the degree listed on the resume’ more than enough?
In fact, there are plenty of jobs that require you to submit your college transcripts as part of the application process. All education jobs require this.
Anyone with an average intelligence and the drive to succeed, even with the desire to go frequently to the teachers for extra help, can and WILL get a degree.
Few students are able to go to their professors for help, thanks to a variety of issues. Scheduling means that the teachers have infrequent office hours that only day students can access. The majority of undergraduate courses nowadays are taught by “adjunct faculty” – part-timers who are not even given access to an office, should the student wish to go for assistance.
The controlling factor in whether an adult student completes a degree is generally money.
However, a degree doesn’t necessarily mean you are automatically an “Einstein”!
That’s pretty clear.
Naturally, you need high school to get ahead in life, but many people, men especially, became successful financially, and have even proven themselves giants in the “mental Olympics”, without finishing college. Take for example Bill Gates, a billionaire, and Rush Limbaugh, a millionaire.
What has being wealthy got to do with being a “giant in the ‘mental Olympics’”. whatever that is supposed to mean? And how can you compare Bill Gates, a genius at computers and business (though clearly with Asperger’s) with Rush Limbaugh, a class A hypocrite who buys his way out of repeated convictions thanks to his money and his influential friends, while still claiming moral superiority?
Rush admits on the air that he never set foot in college.There are perhaps more male MENSA members than there are female members (geniuses). My guess is that some of these men probably didn’t go to college either.
You utterly made that up from the whole cloth. You speculated that there might be more male than female Mensa members, and then you made comments about this as though it were true. Mensa is a social organization. Membership is based not only on the level at which you score on an IQ test, but also on whether you feel like spending your time in a group that likes to talk about how smart they are.
Perhaps Rush Limbaugh should set foot on a college campus once in his life. He seems to talk an awful lot about something he has no personal experience with or knowledge about.
Personally, I am getting sick and tired of all the male bashing, especially on the college campuses (women’s studies and everyday interpersonal dynamics). I experienced some of that when I attended college in Central New York way back in 1975. I was constantly debating in the cafeteria with the “feminazis”…
Now there’s a word that didn’t exist back when you were in college in 1975. Did you get it from Rush Limbaugh? When was the last time you set foot on a college campus and visited the Women’s Studies Department?
…and I think it’s only gotten worse.
Based on…? In fact, nowadays there are few women who consider themselves to be “feminists”. The neocon backlash against this has reached the point where people have forgotten that the purpose of the movement was to encourage women to reach their potential, and stop social institutions from actively preventing that from happening.
I have one thing to say to young men who are considering going to college: GET TOUGH, AND GET SOME INITIATIVE! Men may have to swim against the current nowadays, and yes, nowadays IT MAY TAKE SOME MEN TWICE AS MUCH WORK TO GET HALF AS MUCH CREDIT AND RECOGNITION. This was not unlike the motto of many women in earlier days (substitute the word “women” for men above), and guess what guys — FORTUNATELY IT’S NOT THAT DIFFICULT!!!!! TOUCHE’ !
Unfortunately much of your “get tough” advice would need to be taken when these “young men” were in middle and high school. Thanks to the fact that they aren’t cracking the books in preparation for college, it really may be twice as hard to get the same degree as for a girl who worked hard in high school and is well prepared.
With all the talk about “affirmative action for men” (see Encarta article), one area that college promoters can start improving on is the billboard ads and ads on the internet. I made an informal study as I drove down many a highway and surfed many times on the web and found something really startling, and this could affect young children’s minds: NOT ONCE DID I SEE MALES IN THE COLLEGE ADS — ALWAYS A FEMALE — ALWAYS A FEMALE!!!!!! What’s a little boy going to think? (Mommy, do boys count anymore?) SUNY (State University of New York) is a real sexist pig in their billboard advertising.
You’re looking for colleges to use their marketing departments for affirmative action, to attract boys who aren’t otherwise qualified to attend by making the college environment appear predominantly male? That would be a bad business practice. Like any business, colleges target potential customers. Boys don’t choose to go to college like girls do. They are pushed by their families or they don’t go.
Not to mention the fact that colleges are predominantly female. That’s the reality nowadays.
Boys and girls have different educational needs. Boys often need help with language and writing skills, but rarely do they seek this out. Girls often are allowed to fall by the wayside in math and math-based subjects. Read Failing at Fairness by Sadker and Sadker.
But really, I do love and appreciate women. I’ve been married to one for almost twenty years now. Would you stay married to someone you hate for twenty years???
But do you respect women you have never met as individuals? Would you ask them about their lives, or do you prefer the information you get from Rush Limbaugh, lumping them together into an anonymous homogenous group, unrelated to reality?
Would you stay married to a woman for 20 years although you think they only achieve anything because men “let” them and allow them unfair advantages? Clearly you have.
Please don’t misunderstand. My aim is not misogyny — just simple fairness and justice, that’s all.
Ok, “fairness” and “justice”. Please define what you mean by these, it’s not clear from reading what you’ve written.
Is that asking too much? Or should we “new men” just tend to baking cookies and attempt to get in touch with our “feelings” (the new buzz word for “FEMININE SIDE” — AARRGGHHHH!)
Cookies are good. Making homemade cookies is not a sign of emasculation or feminization. Does thinking about making cookies make you go “argh” because you consider baking cookies to be “women’s work”? Lots of guys bake them, some even for a living. Try it, you may like it.
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